The couple, from Irvington, New York, who already have two children aged two and four, conceived the triplets without fertility treatment.

Twins, triplets and quadruplets have become much more common over the past few decades because of fertility treatments, but identical triplets are still rare. Some scientists estimate they occur in as few as 1 in 100 million births. Others peg the number higher, at 1 in 500,000 or even 1 in 64,000.

The three tiny newborn boys emerged from the the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center on Tuesday wearing matching blue hats and asleep in a pram.

The triplets were born on Friday by Caesarean section.

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Of their three new additions, parents Desmond and Kerry said: "We just feel lucky and blessed that we have these three amazing little babies and they're healthy and, frankly, kinda cute, to boot, which we weren't expecting,"

Desmond, a lawyer, admitted that when he learned he and his wife were expecting triplets eight weeks into her pregnancy he uttered just one word: "Wow."

Kerry, who works for an Internet advertising firm, said she gained 50 pounds during her 36-week pregnancy - combined, the youngsters weighed a little more than 16 1/2 pounds at birth.

Amos Grunebaum, the medical center's director of obstetrics, called the birth phenomenon "one in a million."

On nearby Long Island, another set of identical triplet boys was born in February at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. Their parents used in vitro fertilization.

The most famous case of identical multiple births was that of the Dionne quintuplets, born in 1934 to in the small Canadian town of Callander, Ontario. At the time, they were the only known quintuplets to survive more than a few days, and the infants created a worldwide sensation.

The provincial government separated them from their impoverished parents and put in a specially built hospital – called Quintland – where over the years millions of tourists viewed them through one-way glass.

One sister, Emilie, died in 1954; another, Marie, died in 1970. The three other sisters eventually sued over the way they had been treated as children and received a $2.8 million settlement. Yvonne died in 2001, leaving just Annette and Cecile.